Chapter Eight
I missed Ilona when she left to run errands, but she promised to come back for lunch, and I’d offered to pay. Being here with her felt a little like having Mom back, specifically the kinder parts of Mom I’d temporarily forgotten.
The house was a time machine. Bits and pieces remained exactly as they were in my childhood, and with them came more memories.
The way Mom fussed over my hair, dress, and shoes on prom night.
Birthday parties with all my friends and a personalized cake.
The hours she spent baking, only for a bunch of kids to demolish the work in minutes.
A treasure trove of my grandma’s thimbles hidden inside a tea tin took me back to elementary school.
I hadn’t thought about my mom’s mom in so long I barely recalled her features.
We lost her when I was eight. Still, vague images of her at the kitchen table formed.
She watched Mom cook and clean or brush my hair. And she critiqued.
I winced. I hadn’t thought much of her commentary at the time, but as an adult woman today, I hated the memory for Mom’s sake. Grandma adored me, but I wondered about her relationship with Mom. Did she know how poorly Dad treated her?
Did she know he wasn’t my father?
I ran the back of one arm across my forehead and put the thimbles away.
Grandma was curt and expected everything to be done a certain way.
The proper way. Her way. Would Mom have gone to her for advice about her pregnancy?
Did Mom make the decision to pretend I was my dad’s child on her own, or did Grandma help her hide the indiscretion, because it simply wasn’t acceptable?
Had she known and hated me for what I was in her eyes?
An accident. Proof of her daughter’s unwed exploits? The reason she married an abuser.
My heart ached at all the awful possibilities.
Mom said Dad didn’t know I wasn’t his daughter, but was it possible he guessed?
She said he didn’t hit her again for a year after she came home from France.
Was that long enough for him to question why I looked nothing like him?
Or why an allegedly premature baby weighed six and a half pounds?
Did he hate us both because he knew the truth?
I’d spent my childhood counting the days until I could leave this house and get away from him, only to marry a man who treated me with the same simmering disdain. I hadn’t really gone anywhere, and now I was back where I’d started.
I ordered delivery from a local sandwich shop. Then I closed the windows and pumped up the air-conditioning before the southern Virginia summer sun baked me into jerky.
I swept the floor again while I waited for the food, then carried a glass of iced water and stack of unopened bills into the dining room.
I sat on the floor and sorted the bills into piles according to sender.
Months of unpaid utilities made my stomach ache.
The final notice regarding her property taxes didn’t help.
Thirty days to pay or the home went up for a sheriff’s auction.
I checked the date at the top of the letter and felt my heart seize. I had four days.
Fatigue, desperation, and hunger squeezed the air from my lungs.
Why did I think I could do this? I didn’t have any money.
I didn’t have time to bake and sell enough pastries to cover even half of Mom’s debts.
I had access to my marital accounts during the divorce, but there’s no way I could get my hands on the amount it would take to set things in order.
In all the years of our marriage, I’d stuck to a tightly constructed budget, spending only on necessities like groceries and gas.
Robert paid the lease on my BMW, because everything was in his name, and all our utilities were autodrafted.
With attached fees and penalties, Mom owed nearly ten thousand dollars.
Robert would never let that much go without a fight. I needed a miracle.
I rolled onto my back and stared at the outdated pendant light.
Unlike the kitchen, this room filled me with tension and dread.
Long evenings waiting for Dad to come home.
Wondering what to expect. A chocolate bar from the gas station, because he was happy?
Or long laments over Mom’s cooking until the meal went cold?
Their arguments morphed into garbled screams in my head.
The crash of thrown plates and clatter of overturned roast. Then Mama’s tears.
My jaw locked, and I rolled onto my side, curling my knees to my chest, arms caged around them. I’d hated her for staying.
And yet I had stayed with Robert. Like my mother before me, I waited for my husband to come home too. I held my breath when the garage door went up. Braced for his mood. Endured his unkind words. All so my husband could treat me with the same hostility and neglect as my dad.
How would my biological father have treated me? Certainly not any worse.
For the first time in my life, I wasn’t so sure I wouldn’t have done exactly what Mom did, had I been in her place.
She lived in a different time. In a different world.
She didn’t finish college. There weren’t many job opportunities for single moms. Divorce was a dirty word to many, and if she left Dad, I wasn’t sure what society would’ve made of her.
She’d needed so much help, but access to help didn’t exist back then like it does now, especially not in the way of financial assistance and female advocacy.
The awareness of marital abuse didn’t exist, and women couldn’t seek out the handful of available programs without fear of judgment or worse.
Not to mention Dad never would’ve agreed to let her walk away.
I sat upright and scanned the clean room, now filled with my boxed belongings.
I had six more rooms to empty before I could begin to unpack my new life.
Three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, a living room and laundry room on this floor.
I couldn’t begin to think about all the closets, or what awaited me in the basement and attic.
I’d save those projects for after I moved in.
The doorbell rang, and I forced myself onto my feet. Lunch had arrived, and Ilona would soon return. Good, because I wasn’t doing well left alone with my thoughts.
I made my way to the front door and collected the bags from the porch, then sent a text to let Ilona know to come on over.
A stack of books on the windowsill caught my eye after I hit Send. Atop the pile sat a button box.
I set the lunch bags on a chair and opened the little box with greedy hands, plunging my fingers into the contents. The edge of something stiff scraped my skin. I pinched it between my thumb and forefinger, then pulled it free. Another photo of my mom and Bastien, my biological father.
My breath caught as I took them in, leaning casually against a fence backed in shrubbery. At a park, perhaps? Bastien wore a T-shirt with stripes and tan pants. Mom wore a cinched-waist dress and a smile as bright as the sun. She looked at the camera, but his eyes were on her.
I flipped the photo over, scanning Mom’s faded script. Sébastien Allard, summer abroad.
My heart raced as I knelt and dumped the box’s contents onto the floor.
I spread the button pile with my palm. The little disks felt cool and smooth to my touch, brightly colored and cheerful against the worn brown carpet.
I searched hungrily for something more. Another photo, or trinket, some additional clue about my origin.
There were only buttons.
I heard Ilona humming as she crossed the back patio and entered the house.
Deeply rooted Southern manners insisted I rise and greet her, but I could only stare at the photo, buttons, and box scattered before me.
Based on Mom and Bastien’s clothing, the picture was taken on a different day than the photo Mom had given me.
On the day she told me about my origin, and the man with one arm around her in this image. Was I already growing inside her then?
I’d obsessed over the first photo during the weeks I waited for Mom to talk again.
I’d compiled questions and fabricated scenarios in my mind in which she told me every detail she could recall about the man she’d met in France.
Since her death, I’d been so focused on leaving Robert that I hadn’t had much time or energy to think about my biological father.
Now, I wondered again what my life might’ve been if Mom had made a different decision.
Could we have been safe and happy? Would she still be here today?
Ilona stopped a few feet from where I knelt on the living room floor. She didn’t speak for a long moment, and neither did I.
Eventually she collected the bags of food from the chair and released a deep, audible sigh. “I see you found the buttons.”
My gaze shot to her, the photograph still clutched in one hand. “You know?”
“Yep.”
I jerked onto my feet. “How long have you known?”
“Longer than you,” she said. “Before you ask, I didn’t say anything because it wasn’t my secret to tell.”
I followed her to the kitchen and collapsed onto a chair at the table.
Ilona poured glasses of iced water and arranged our salads and sandwiches on plates.
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” she said.
“But she did what she thought she had to do to give you a good life. She wasn’t sure she could find him again even if she wanted.
She didn’t have the money for another trip.
She didn’t want to move to France, away from everyone and everything she knew.
She didn’t believe he’d come to America for a girl he’d only known a short time, so she decided it was best never to say a word.
” Ilona pushed the glass of water in my direction.
“That’s all I know about it, so drink up, and try not to be too mad.
She did the best she could with what she had. ”